Warmest Congratulations to Dr. Yuan-Cheng Fung at His Centennial Celebration

Professor Y.C. Fung has made tremendous impacts on science, engineering and humanity through his research and its applications, by setting the highest standards, through educating many students and their students, and providing his exemplary leadership. He has applied his profound knowledge and elegant analytical methods to the study of biomedical problems with rigor and excellence. He established the foundations of biomechanics in living tissues and organs. Through his vision of the power of “making models” to explain and predict biological phenomena, Dr. Fung opened up new vista for bioengineering, from organs-systems to molecules-genes, and has provided the foundation of research activities in many institutions in the United States and the world. He has made outstanding contributions to education in bioengineering, service to professional organizations, and translation to industry and clinical medicine. He is widely recognized as the Father of Biomechanics and the leading Bioengineer in the world. His extraordinary achievements and commands in science, engineering and the arts make him a Renaissance Man for the world.     

知识宣教辅助饮食指导对老年T2DM患者的影响

为了探讨饮食指导联合知识宣教对老年T2DM患者血糖波动的影响,本研究选取在本院治疗的136例老年T2DM患者并随机分组,对照组患者给予常规护理,试验组患者实施知识宣教辅助饮食指导。通过观察比较比较两组患者血糖达标时间、血糖波动次数、平均血糖漂移幅度、空腹血糖、餐后2 h血糖、糖化血红蛋白和血脂水平差异,本研究发现治疗后试验组患者血糖达标时间为(19.06±2.70) h、血糖波动次数为(2.01±0.94)次/d、平均血糖漂移幅度为(3.12±1.04) mmol/L,较对照组均明显改善(p<0.05);试验组患者空腹血糖为(6.01±0.18) mmol/L、餐后2 h血糖(8.31±0.32) mmol/L、糖化血红蛋白(6.39±0.65)%,明显低于对照组(p<0.05);试验组患者LDL-C为(2.49±0.02) mmol/L、TG为(1.12±0.02) mmol/L同对照组比较明显下降(p<0.05)。研究表明,针对老年T2DM患者给予饮食指导联合知识宣教可控制患者血糖和血脂水平,避免血糖波动,值得推广应用。     

脊椎动物FoxO基因亚族的进化

本研究以脊椎动物FoxO作为研究对象,选取NCBI上公布的多个FoxO基因编码蛋白的核苷酸序列,重点分析Fox O蛋白质结构和功能的相似性与差异性,重建FoxO基因的系统发育树并进行选择压力分析,对FoxO基因亚族的起源和进化进行研究分析。结果显示:脊椎动物FoxO蛋白间Forhead结构域十分保守但核定位信号区结构差异较明显,尤其是FoxO6蛋白,并且多个磷酸化位点在哺乳动物FoxO6中缺失,削弱核输出信号,但在斑马鱼和原鸡的FoxO6中未缺失这些位点,推测其胞质定位调控作用仍十分重要。FoxO3中多个磷酸化位点可能与寿命延长作用相关。系统发育树表明FoxO1是FoxO基因的祖先基因,不同FoxO基因进化速率不同。选择压力分析结果显示FoxO基因过程每个位点经历不同的选择压,并且获得25个正选择位点,这些正选择位点可能对FoxO不同基因的形成和新功能的产生中具有十分重要的作用。     

Determination of the Blood,Hormone and Obesity Value Ranges that Indicate the Breast Cancer,Using Data Mining Based Expert System

Breast cancer is a dangerous type of cancer that spreads into other organs over time. Therefore, medical studies are being done for the early diagnosis by means of the anthropometric data and blood analysis values besides the mammographic and histological findings. However, medical studies have identified only cancer-related values but the value ranges indicating the cancer have not been determined yet. Concurrently the automated diagnostic systems are being developed to assist medical specialists in biomedical engineering studies. The range of values or boundaries indicating the cancer are automatically determined in biomedical methods, but only the diagnostic result is presented. Because of this, biomedical studies don't provide enough opportunity for medical experts to evaluate the relationship between values and result. In this study, decision trees that is one of data mining method was applied to anthropometric data and blood analysis values to complete the mentioned deficiencies in breast cancer diagnosis aiming studies. The determined value ranges were also presented visually to medical experts understand them easily. The proposed diagnostic system has accuracy rate up to 90.52% and provides value ranges indicating the breast cancer as well as mathematically presents the relations between the values and cancer.     

Evolutionary divergence of the nuclear pore complex from fungi to metazoans

Nuclear pore complex (NPC) is the largest multimeric protein assembly of the eukaryotic cell, which mediates the nucleocytoplasmic transport. The constituent proteins of this assembly (nucleoporins) are present in varying copy numbers to give a size from ~ 60 MDa (yeast) to 112 MDa (human) and share common ancestry with other membrane‐associated complexes such as COPI/COPII and thus share the same structural folds. However, the nucleoporins across species exhibit very low percentage sequence similarity and this reflects in their distinct secondary structure and domain organization. We employed thorough sequence and phylogenetic analysis guided from structure‐based alignments of all the nucleoporins from fungi to metazoans to understand the evolution of NPC. Through evolutionary pressure analysis on various nucleoporins, we deduced that these proteins are under differential selection pressure and hence the homologous interacting partners do not complement each other in the in vitro pull‐down assay. The super tree analysis of all nucleoporins taken together illustrates divergent evolution of nucleoporins and notably, the degree of divergence is more apparent in higher order organisms as compared to lower species. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that the protein–protein interactions in such large multimeric assemblies are species specific in nature and hence their structure and function should also be studied in an organism‐specific manner.     

圈养东北虎血液生理参数的测定

东北虎(Panthera tigris altaica)是一种淑临灭绝的食肉动物,现已被列入IUCN濒危物种红色名录(Goodrich et al.,2015)。东北虎主要分布于俄罗斯远东地区、中国东北地区和朝鲜的北部(Kitchener et al.,2017)。根据中俄边境地区的野生东北虎数量调查统计,该地区生存着成年老虎39只和幼虎22只(Matiukhina et al., 2016)。